The Marvelverse succeeded in victory number 11 as I once asked in Guardians of the Galaxy. Now we also know that the answer to what Disney has bet the farm on for number 12 to take the title away from Pixar…Ant-Man in July.
I want to get back to the Avengers-Whedon reunion-two-peat.
Holy buckets, Whedon did it again! He managed to bring together the three heavy-hitter franchises with their supporting cast and ongoing backstory issues, namely the Hydra fallout from Winter Soldier and the TV show Agents of SHIELD. Then throw in a new villain and three Avengers’ recruits. Personally, I think Whedon succeeded by avoiding the common error made with superhero flicks, he stuck with Ultron on being the nemesis instead of two or three with separate agendas. Case in point, Spider-Man 3 which had three opponents and none got much traction.
The premise? The Avengers are in some fictional Eastern European country kicking Hydra’s ass all to retrieve Loki’s staff; I can’t remember how it got loose, I was more thrilled to see Baron von Strucker. Thor agrees to let Tony and Bruce exam the magic stone powering the staff because Tony thinks there must be a solution in it. Turns out Tony was mostly right, the stone is an advanced computer of sorts and Hydra was trying to harness it to build the Ultron project, a form of AI. Obviously the lessons from Frankenstein, Jurassic Park and Demon Seed are wasted on Tony as he proceeds and it results in Ultron taking over his Iron Legion robots. What Tony didn’t know was he was partially manipulated by Wanda Maximoff (aka the Scarlet Witch) into removing the safeguards. You can deduce the rest.
I found the positives easily drowned out the few negatives this time around. James Spader’s Ultron was both humorous and menacing without being the traditional virtual-moustache twirling villain his comics counterpart usually is. I liked how the evil robot is a part of Tony too; they share the concern about keeping the world save, they just disagree on the means to achieve it. Hawkeye gains a larger role! Good, I felt he was the token non-powered hero last time. Numerous cameos from lesser characters we love from the Marvelverse: Sam (the Falcon), James (Warmachine), Dr. Selvig, Agent Carter, and Nick Fury. For us nerds who know their comics it was cool to see von Strucker, Ulyssess Klaue (in the comics, he will become Dr. Klaw, an inept villain in The Fantastic Four) and Stan the Man Lee.
The only negative I will raise is the actors Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. They’re rather flat and lack chemistry as siblings much like they did as a married couple in Godzilla. Time will tell with their next outing in Captain America: Civil War.
As always stay through the credits but once the preview of the next step concludes, you can split, there’s no second bit as per Avengers.
Alamo Extras: I waited too long to write this to get them written down but the two big ones that stuck with me: snippets of the awful SHIELD made-for-TV movie starring David Hasselhoff as Col. Fury and pictures of bootlegged Avengers toys from around the world. The best was a set of superheroes packaged as the Avengers yet in the package was Batman and Shrek.